Hundreds of people in northwest Western Australia have been sending money to criminals from West Africa. The con artists target vulnerable people through dating websites and social networking. Even when police officers show evidence that they are being scammed, some targets continue to send money.

ABC news quoted a detective:

“No matter how much we can explain and show them documents, photos etc to face the reality that they have been defrauded and the dream is not real, for a lot of victims it’s too much for them to accept so they continue to believe the dream until they have nothing left,” he said.

3

Comment on this article

They can be so charming and when we are loving and nice, it often doesn’t occur to us…even after multiple abuses….that they aren’t like we are. They don’t want to love and be loved. Someone commented on an article the other day and I can’t remember their name. They wrote about the fact that the internet has made it more possible for spaths to reach more victims and con them without anyone ever even knowing who they really are or where they’re at. That is so true these days.

They know exactly where our target is? Do want to be loved like we’ve never been loved? Do we want to be taken care of? Do we want to take care of someone who really needs us? Are we greedy in the case of those Ponzi schemes? The list goes on forever and they can talk to us for a few minutes, or get some information out of us on line through chatting in an unsafe place, and they find the exact hook that will get us to let them suck the life’s blood out of us, or the life’s savings out of our accounts. I feel sorry for these people because people who don’t understand spaths will make fun of them.

Loneliness is a real problem.And if some “needy” person asks for OUR help,we feel special.We want to be the ONE to help them,to MAKE THEIR DREAMS COME TRUE.In effect,their dreams become our dreams.The more we invest in these dreams,the harder it is to let go.And when faced with evidence that we’ve been scammed,our brain shrieks “Oh God,don’t let it be true!”(denial)